row, I should only get called to order and do
nothing."

He reached the bank of the Thames, at the eastward end of the Strand.

Walking straight on, as absently as ever, he crossed Waterloo Bridge,
and followed the broad street that lay before him on the other side. He
was thinking of the future again: Regina was in his mind now. The one
prospect that he could see of a tranquil and happy life--with duties as
well as pleasures; duties that might rouse him to find the vocation
for which he was fit--was the prospect of his marriage. What was
the obstacle that stood in his way? The vile obstacle of money; the
contemptible spirit of ostentation which forbade him to live humbly on
his own sufficient little income, and insisted that he should purchase
domestic happiness at the price of the tawdry splendour of a rich
tradesman and his friends. And Regina, who was free to follow her
own better impulses--Regina, whose heart acknowledged him as its
master--bowed before the golden image which was the tutelary deity of
her uncle's household, and said resignedly, Love must wait!

Still walking blindly on, he was roused on a sudden to a sense of
passing events. Crossing a side-street at the moment, a man caught him
roughly by the arm, and saved him from being run over. The man had a
broom in his hand; he was a crossing-sweeper. "I think I've earned my
penny, sir!" he said.

Amelius gave him half-a-crown. The man shouldered his broom, and tossed
up the money, in a transport of delight. "Here's something to go home
with!" he cried, as he caught the half-crown again.

"Have you got a family at home?" Amelius asked.

"Only one, sir," said the man. "The others are all dead. She's as good
a girl and as pretty a girl as ever put on a petticoat--though I say it
that shouldn't. Thank you kindly, sir. Good night!"

Amelius looked after the poor fellow, happy at least for that night! "If
I had only been lucky enough to fall in love with the crossing-sweeper's
daughter," he thought bitterly, _"she_ would have married me when I
asked her."

He looked along the street. It curved away in the distance, with no
visible limit to it. Arrived at the next side-street on his left,
Amelius turned down it, weary of walking longer in the same direction.
Whither it might lead him he neither knew nor cared. In his present
humour it was a pleasurable sensation to feel himself lost in London.

The short street suddenly widened; a blaze of flaring gaslig